Opium, unequal treaties, and China's historical memory

Britain's legal access to Chinese ports rested on a contradiction. The opium trade remained active when the Treaty of Tientsin was concluded, and protecting vulnerable commerce was part of the practical incentive for obtaining access. Cooperation with officials was easier than repeatedly coercing them, but that convenience rested on China's military defeat by assembled foreign powers. Those events continued to carry political significance. Chinese state memory reaches much farther back than the roughly century and a half separating the treaty era from the present. This context explains why later naval patrols could be locally useful and still appear as extensions of imperial humiliation.